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When was it Sony went wrong?
respected
Member Posts: 6
Before i get the instant crush of people saying "when the game was released" let me that in some ways id agree they released a MMO with no lvl grind and no loot with a great background to build on and plenty of room to grow. I remember the first six months of the game, i had a blast it was great fun and i think everyone would agree.... i personally think the game went to cr** when they made changes to the creature handler class, it seemed everyone had a pet and mastering only the first two roles allowed ya to control a fierce beast that made p vs E fun, this was also before they changed the way armor was so duels all were decided quickly and without buffs drugs food etc so P vs P was fun, Once the pets got weakened people discovered how weak their own characters and thus changed the way people went about the game? anyone agree or disagree this game didnt have to die but it cant be saved now....
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They went wrong when they released the game 6 months too early. They did it to beat out Eq2's release and screwed the whole thing up because of it. Their second mistake were holocrons and jedis, game was fun even with all the bugs until the holo grind started. And now its too late to save the game no matter how many patches they do.
Umm since Sony is making EQII also. they could release either game anytime they wanted too.
MMO Vet since AOL Neverwinter Nights circa 1992. My MMO beat up your MMO. =S
The holo grind hurt the game the worst. It caused the player cities and most of the NPCs to become ghost towns and ruined working professions like Dancer and Musician.
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Star Wars: Galaxies - Ibra Olasi (Valcyn Server)
Games Tried:
Everquest (not a power gamer)
Earth and Beyond (kinda fun, kinda boring)
Planetside (rather play Counter-Strike)
Lineage 2 (see Everquest above, plus too many PKers and Bots)
Guild Wars [E3 trial] (Not too bad from what I saw, nothing very new though)
Eve Online (somewhat fun, somewhat repetetive)
Waiting for:
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Games Tried: SWTOR, Star Trek Online, EQ, EQ2, Earth and Beyond, Planetside, Lineage 2, Eve Online, WoW, City of Heroes, City of Villians, Auto Assault, Fallen Earth
Star Wars: Galaxies - Ibra Olasi (Valcyn Server) [Dead, screw you SOE]
I hear people say this all the time and I totally disagree that Holo grinding hurt Dancer/Musican. The holo grind is over and the cantinas are still filled with AFK dances/musicans so what's the excuse now? Before the holo grind the cantinas had AFK dancers and musicans (if they had any at all) so what was the excuse then?
Even if all this wasn't the case and AFK only happened with the holo grind, how did that adversly effect anyone? The Entertainers who wanted to entertain, still could. So what if there were afk Entertainers right next to them? How did this hurt them at all? It actually probably helped as most AFK Entertainers auto accept group invites making your group larger meaning more XP. Not only that, but most people I know, given the choice of watching an AFK Entertainer or someone really playing, will watch the Entertainer that's really playing every time.
If someone were to ask me what the worst thing about SWG was, I would have to say the Buffs. The Buffs made every combat profession a joke to master, flooded the economy with money due to solo groups, and took grouping out of the picture entirely. I think just seriously reducing the effectivness of buffs would go a long way to fixing things.
I went to the SWG boards and found my post on the whole Hologrind thing. I wrote it awhile ago so it's a little dated and I focused mainly on the crafting professions and the economy:
All of this is just my personal opinion and my observations, I am very interested on how others see this. I open this for a friendly debate, not to start a flame war on which profession is better than which.
buffs and 80% comp armor destroyed this game for sure
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This is not the post your looking for, move along
If pitbulls could lock their jaw the first pitbull would still be hanging on
Ehh you do know tha EQ2 released over 1+ years after SWG? So even if SWG released 6 months after it did, it STILL would have beat out EQ2's release.
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As for the main theme of this thread:
1. Yes it was the Jedi Hologrind that forever messed up SWG. It messed up every player in every profession. Since all it took was 1 player to be forced to Hologrind any profession (weaponsmith, dancer, doctor, anything) to drive away the players who actually wanted to play those professions. The Jedi Hologrind has forever damaged SWG. The majority of the old, quality, SWG community has left. Replaced by a new comunity that is much more short term. They will leave if they do not get their Jedi. They will leave if they do get their Jedi. They signed up for SWG after seeing the borderline-false ads showing SWG as another Jedi Outcast-type game.
Sadly, it does not matter to Sony. Since SWG will make a profit no matter what. The number of players is still enough to make SWG a hit success, even if the old quality community has left. If/when SWG reaches the 5 year mark, it will have fulfilled its intentended shelf life.
2. I can say all this because I have followed SWG since 1999. I was there when the first player PAs were formed. After the Jedi Hologrind, an insane amount of player PA sites closed down. Solid proof of the irrepuable (sp) damage forever done by the Hologrind. Those PAs had been with SWG for years and years.
3. After the Hologrind, then there are a slew of other minor reasons why SWG is getting messed up. PvP that does not have landcontrol. (originally talked about, but never put in.) Creature Handler nerfs, the current insane buffs players can get allowing them to solo monsters that should not be soloable. Armors with 80%+ defenses. I can still remember the first 4 months when any armor with 25% to 30% defense was a NICE find.
4. And my personal favorite - how for the past months LucasArts has made new ads showing SWG as a Jedi game.
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The problem was two fold...it reducedwho was adventuring (because there would of been a higher percentage if they weren't grinding non-cambate professions they would of never picked up otherwise) so adventures hardly ever came into the cantiana's to get healed/socialise and tip.
It also increased how many dancers/musicans there were AFK both annoying the real entertainers and giving no insentave to tip as there were 10 other entertainers around afk.
As for your second post about holo grinding being good for crafters I totally dissagree...first it ment more competetion...far more crafters created who stockpiled items to sell and make some credits before the moved on to their next grind. This far out weighed the swithing of combat professions. Particullary when you figure how many people after they finished their profession sold their gear and started the next grind.
The other thing is that it decreased the cost you could charge for an item because of the increased in crafters. While at the same time causing huge inflation because so many people had butt loads of money. So you had a ton of peopl with crap loads of money that paid bottom dollar for everything...giving no reason for people who really liked crafting t continue...this is of course a generality of the problem and different people would of experienced it differently, but this became the over all problem with the economy of the game.
Originally posted by bverji
The problem was two fold...it reducedwho was adventuring (because there would of been a higher percentage if they weren't grinding non-cambate professions they would of never picked up otherwise) so adventures hardly ever came into the cantiana's to get healed/socialise and tip.
Wow, what server were you on? On know on Naritus and Shadowfire that there were more people in combat than ever. This is how weaponsmiths became so rich, as I said in my previous post. Typically the people that were primarily Artisans, did the artisan grind first and the combatants did those professions first, and as you've said, if you're dedicated you can grind through most artisan professions in a couple of days, which made the artisans then switch to the combat professions which took much more time, if only to get the prereqs.
It also increased how many dancers/musicans there were AFK both annoying the real entertainers and giving no insentave to tip as there were 10 other entertainers around afk.
I can't speak for everyone, but I know if there are any Entertainers in the cantina that aren't AFK I always watch them and tip them, just for not being AFK.
As for your second post about holo grinding being good for crafters I totally dissagree...first it ment more competetion...far more crafters created who stockpiled items to sell and make some credits before the moved on to their next grind. This far out weighed the swithing of combat professions. Particullary when you figure how many people after they finished their profession sold their gear and started the next grind.
Crafters who were dedicated would have the occasional holo-grinder come though with really low prices, but they wouldn't last and business would go back to normal. Most hologrinding crafters never worried about factories so they didn't have enough product to really impact the dedicated crafters. The only crafters that would be really hurt by it is DE's since Droids last forever and to a lesser extent Architects since, while their products do decay, they can last forever if taken care of.
The other thing is that it decreased the cost you could charge for an item because of the increased in crafters. While at the same time causing huge inflation because so many people had butt loads of money. So you had a ton of peopl with crap loads of money that paid bottom dollar for everything...giving no reason for people who really liked crafting t continue...this is of course a generality of the problem and different people would of experienced it differently, but this became the over all problem with the economy of the game.
I know on Naritus that prices rose and didn't fall during the Hologrind. A lot of it was driven by the Doctors buffs. I will say that I can make more per hour doing solo groups than I can being a Droid Engineer.
Prices increased on Kettemoor, but that was more due to a resource shortage. Suddenly, a hologrinder needed 500k units of ore to master Architect, and was willing to pay 5+ CPU for this ore. This drove up resource prices, which in turn drove up prices for goods for a number of professions like weaponsmith and armorsmith. However architect goods dropped in price typically. Why? Because the market was suddenly flooded with goods, the goods never decayed, and with the exception of harvesters, all goods were the same quality. A house built with crappy materials and a house built with amazing materials were identical after the combine was complete.
I think what's killing SWG is just the whole combination of things listed above, and the emergence of a completely self sufficient class - the jedi. They make their own weapon, heal themselves, rez themselves. They don't need anyone else, so as they become more prominant, they will slowly destroy the economy.
Also, JTL hurt the ground-based economy, as spacecraft do not need components from an armorsmith, weaponsmith, etc. People who are now in space most of the time don't need anyone else either.
for me personally, i never got into the holo grind, i almost got sucked in when they gave out free holocrons for Christmas, but when my holo said dancer and i tried to afk macro it, i gave up after about three hours because some guildees wanted to hunt rancors and i was still a master commando, pluss dancer was boring as hell, so that was that.
During the holo madness i wasnt really affected because our guild weaponsmight was hologrinding but was so commited to us that he managed to keep making his high quality weapons at low prices, and eventually(on the 22nd profession i believe) made jedi, so Jaa'Cyn i thank you good buddy. the same went for armor, i had a set of 80+% composit and our weaponsmith had the best repair kits i had ever seen(about 98%) so i never had to get an entire new set of armor...even when i decided to go to Teras Kasi, (which i mastered in 4 days soloing rancors, Teras Kasi are obscenely overpowered in PvE) i had 70% Ubese armor when i did Teras Kasi, and I got it from a guy who was just about ready to start his hologrind so i got it just in time...
I got very lucky in not being effected much by the holo grind, though it did come with some minor annoyances, I mostly stayed happy, that is untill i decided to return to Bounty Hunter
getting to master Bounty Hunter was difficult enough, it gave me a challenge with only about 9 borked missions total...the weapons part was annoying and basically consisted of getting buffed and mindlessly killing some creature that i cant remember the name of on Lok, but i wanted so badly to hunt jedi that i didnt care...when i hit master, it was still two weeks from the jedi player bounty patch(the one that would fix them, not the one that implimented them all messed up) and when the patch came, the jedi bounties were still messed up, visibility was messed up and jedi were far too powerfull to solo 60% of the time, i spent 2 weeks after the patch that was supposed to fix Jedi bounties, and i saw a total of one jedi on the boards, and when i took the mission he was offline, and when i logged on a few days latter, the mission had magically poofed from my datapad(or something like that, i don't remember exactly what happened)
i was so frustrated and fed up with SOE's carrot dangling and messed up professions that i regretably said goodbye to my awsome guild (the best i have ever been in for any game ever, long live Sector Ten)
i never returned to SWG save for when they gave us a free week of play right before JtLS came out, i hunted down one jedi in that time but he was too powerfull for me to kill(theres a shocker) and the lag had become horrendous even with DSL...not sure what happened there. probably a huge player spike due to the free trial
so maybe hologrinding ruined the economy, it raised prices on all goods, so even the people that werent trying to get jedi still had to pay a huge amount of money for a standard E-11 carbine. The PvP was ruined by the jedi grind, people who mastered combat medic found out that it was bugged and could be exploited to kill tons of people at once, and with all the ub3r weapons that were going around at this time, if you didnt have a 20 million credit blaster and a 10 million credit set of composit armor, you didnt stand a chance. For all intents and purposes, yes hologrinding was a cancer in SWG, it started in the economy and spread to the entire playerbase, creating a volitile and hostile atmosphere that most gammers just didnt want to put up with, people were constantly pissed because they were always grinding and paying out of their asses for a weapon that would last for about a week due to a messed up repair system, and not only that but they wouldnt be using it anyway because they would be on to their next profession.
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Your argument is like a two legged dog with an eating disorder...weak and unbalanced.
I completely agree with xplor on this one.....
THe hologrind was the beginning of the end for this game. When the path to jedi became obvious then that is all that anyone wanted to be and thus a perfectly good game is ruined.
I would have loved to see jedi be a random selection done by the system and with a very low population cap. Also getting rid of buffs so that Docs would do what they were originaly meant to do which is healing people. I would like to see armor nerfed back to where it started.
Without the buffs and armor and with jedi capped the game would be perfect as it once was long ago in a galaxy far far away.......
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